2008 BEST OF WEB: JUDGES' SELECTION | YANG KIM
The design team, led by Nathan Young, set out to convey a mes­sage of authenticity and transparency. “Our industry is known for being a little bit secretive about what happens behind the kimono creatively,” says Monberg, “but we just aren’t that way as an agency.” Toward that end, the site includes a blog, which is featured on the home page next to recently completed projects. “The blog makes this site a more accurate representation of who we are as a firm,” says Monberg. “It was about providing an unvarnished look at the people who work here.”

STEP Best of Web judge Yang Kim, creative director of People Design in Grand Rapids, Mich., praises the site for its unpre­tentious vibe. Recent blog entries—(and anyone at the agency can post them)—include a haiku to honor a seagull who hangs out on Hornall Anderson’s kitchen windowsill and a photo essay on sneaker style at the firm. “It’s an extremely friendly site,” she says. “And the blog is one of the things that makes it so accessi­ble. It gives potential clients the chance to learn about the people who may be working on their brands. I think any client would appreciate that.”

As a judge and designer, she’s seen far too many sites for brands that mistake gimmicks for engagement. “A lot of companies feature these gratuitous elements,” she says. “There might be a game, for instance, which is supposed to get you to spend more time on the site, but those sort of things don’t tend to have a lot of substance. And after a few minutes, it’s like, ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ This is a totally different approach. There are no tricks. The site presents itself simply and honestly: Here’s the work, here’s what we do.”

One page arranges images from numerous projects in a tidy grid. Users can click on any of these projects to explore them in detail. But for a quick preview, they can roll over a project to see a slide show. It’s a dynamic way to skin the content, and one of many functional details that impressed Kim. Other attributes of note include the ability to use a keyboard’s arrow keys to navigate. And to do a search, users can just start typing—anywhere. “It just goes to show you that you don’t need tiny gray type against a black background,” says Kim. That might be a way to look cool instantly, but it’s not going to make a connection with the user the way this site does.” Hornall Anderson maintains that when it comes to websites, interactivity is as much a representation of a brand’s values s the visual aesthetic. “If we say that brand is the ‘gut feel’ you have about something,” says Monberg, “then a brand is not just bout the logo and colors. The way that the website engages with users—whether it treats you like a human being or not—that’s your brand.”

In this case, a robust tagging system facilitates lateral navigation. Users can click on “exhibit design” or “e-commerce” tags to see other projects that share those qualities. It’s far more engaging than moving around a site with standard, linear navigation. In fact, if you spend enough time here, those linear sites start to eel almost flawed—like driving through some town whose urban planners laid out only north-south streets, all of them one way. Instead of saying, ‘here’s all our print work,’ or ‘here’s all our packaging,’ we wanted to organize the content in a rich way,” says Monberg. “It’s a dynamic navigation model, which is constantly reshaping and resizing itself.”

That degree of complexity impressed Kim, and it helped her elect the Hornall Anderson site over others that she appreciated. She was drawn, for instance, to a site from Cahan & Associtates for law firm Morrison & Forester (www.mofo.com/career). “But it had one focus,” she says. “And while I won’t say it’s easy to do a site with a singular focus, it’s definitely easier than designing a site with as much content as this one. The Hornall Anderson site is so layered, and they were working with so much information—and yet its purpose is always clear.”

Clarity of purpose is a criterion Kim applies when judging any interactive work. In too many cases, she says, websites give her no clear sense of their aims. “Is this site selling a product?” she says. A service? Is it exploring an environmental issue? And if so, what s that issue? I want to understand the call to action. What am I supposed to do? And I think this site does a great job of outlining hat this is a design firm with services to sell, and then it presents itself clearly and with sincerity.”

Part of the clarity has to do with the small design team for the project that Hornall Anderson deliberately maintained and protected. To understand why, consider an analogy: A doctor who suddenly becomes a patient will almost invariably question his physician’s every move. If anything could inspire a parallel scenario, it would be a project that charged a group of designers with designing their own website.

“From a process standpoint, you could get in a situation where you have too many cooks in the kitchen,” says Monberg. “We took a lot of input from all our senior designers. But we very consciously maintained that small team. We just tried to be a really good client to ourselves, and as a result, there’s been extremely strong support for the site across the firm.” Tiffany Meyers

HORNALL ANDERSON | DESIGNERS: NATHAN YOUNG, CHRIS FREED, RACHEL BLAKELY | CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JAMIE MONBERG | WRITER: ZACHARY MENKEL DEVELOPERS: ADRIEN LO, COREY PAGANUCCI, MATT FRICKELTON | PRODUCER: DANA KRUSE | CLIENT: SELF-PROMOTION | WWW.HORNALLANDERSON.COM